“How to Train Your Dragon” was something special: It was genuinely heartfelt, visually breathtaking and filled with a real sense of wonder. And for DreamWorks, it was a pop-culture free breath of fresh air.

The sequel, “How To Train Your Dragon 2,” isn’t exactly the follow-up I was hoping for. It’s not a bad film, but it’s certainly busier and more jumbled than its predecessor.

The film picks up five years after the original. The Isle of Berk is now a safe, dragon-friendly place that’s fully equipped with dragon stables, feeding stations, and a fire prevention system.

Hiccup (Jay Baruchel), his girlfriend Astrid (America Ferrera), and his friends Snotlout (Jonah Hill), Fishlegs (Christopher Mintz-Plasse), Truffnut (T.J. Miller), and Ruffnut (Kristen Wiig) have all grown up. Now a teenager, Hiccup and his lovable dragon, Toothless, spend their days soaring through the skies and discovering new lands.

While on one of their flying adventures, Hiccup and Astrid encounter a dragon trapper named Eret (Kit Harington), who works for the evil madman Drago (Djimon Hounsou). Drago, an old foe of Hiccup’s father Stoick (Gerard Butler), will stop at nothing to capture the world’s dragons and build his dragon army.

Within the first five minutes of “How to Train Your Dragon 2,” I was fully reminded why I love the film’s universe so much. After a brief introduction, the film opens with a flying sequence where Toothless and Hiccup soar through the clouds and suspend above the oceans.

The sequence, and really the whole film for that matter, is beautifully animated. Each colorful image is crisp and completely detailed. John Powell’s bombastic score makes exciting moments in the film even better, swooping in and blasting you off like the high-flying dragons themselves.

Some shots in the film show hundreds of dragons in a single frame, each with a different scale design and color scheme. In others, you can see each, individual strand of hair on Stoick’s puffy, thick beard.

Like it was in the original film, the friendship between Hiccup and Toothless is really adorable. It’s fun to watch the characters interact and communicate with one another. Really, the “Dragon” series is definite proof that kids will continue to ask for real-life dragons on their Christmas lists for years to come.

One problem with the film is that the story is at times jumbled. The film introduces a lot of ideas and character developments, many of which fail to come full circle. When big moments in the film happen, they don’t feel sincere because they haven’t been given enough momentum beforehand.

Astrid, who played a major role in the first film, is disappointingly demoted to a supporting character role in the sequel. And Drago, the film’s villain, is mostly generic and forgettable when stacked up against some of DreamWorks’ most recent baddies (Shen from “Kung Fu Panda 2” or Captain DuBois from “Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted”).

“How To Train Your Dragon 2” is an exciting, though emotionally underwhelming, addition to the “Dragon” film series. The series’ next installment, “How To Train Your Dragon 3,” is already slated for a June 17, 2016, release date.